Piha Gap – January 28th 2014

29/01/2014

After a layoff for Christmas and January it was great to be training again. Alan, Jason, Paul, Jon & Tony met on Piha road for some track running, beach exploring and stream bashing. First up was a long gnarly rooty descent into the back of Piha. A great start for everyone except Tony who found out that the regular training sessions are at a different pace to the pre-Xmas open sessions!

Next off to the South end of Piha beach to explore “The Gap”. This impressive formation fills with crashing waves at high tide but today was low tide allowing us to explore. We were all following maps with control sites picked by Alan & first was the seastack to the West of the gap. A number of options were tried including the keyhole cave through the hillside, but with big swell we settled for climbing the hill and looking across the crashing waves to the seastack instead. Next explore was the seaward end of Lion Rock – surprisingly easy after the gap. Then off the beach and a big climb up Maungaroa Ridge before losing all the height gained in the 2nd gnarly descent of the day – it’s all about training on hills! Tony headed off back to the car on his own while the other went to explore the canyon below Kitekite falls.

The canyon was great with waterfalls, rock climbing, wading and crawling through holes. A final long climb got us back to our cars but no Tony? Half an hour later we were just about to enable our search & rescue plan when Tony arrived by car having hitched back after coming out onto Piha Rd at a different Carpark. Phew!